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Monday, February 20, 2012

Given that it's just over a year since I first heard of them and they're still pretty much my favourite band (which is a big deal, given my fickle tastes), I thought they deserved a second Band of the Week feature. Prepare for video wall.

You're A Vampire

"Let’s go outside
And chase the squirrels
And drain their blood
Because you’re a vampire"

Nudie Bar

"Gonna rig up some propane tanks
Gonna light the fuse and kill some skanks
Gonna stand back and watch it burn
Maybe that will make him learn"

Fight

"Am I crazy
Am I deranged
Am I crazy
Or have things changed"

Committed

"To be a sheep; a blissful guinea pig
Ignorance is your god, too
Society awaits with open arms
We'll brainwash your demons out of you"

Hoochie Mama

"I don't care about
How much you can lift
And I don't want to hear
Your new death metal riff "

'K, so not as video wall-ish as I intended, but I figure those 4 videos are enough to explain just how awesome One-Eyed Doll are. But just in case you need a little more persuasion, just check out how very endearing Kimberly Freeman is in this doc (and PJ aka Number 3).

Aaaaand, that has positioned weird and I can't quite work out how to fix it. Blame my on-the-verge-of-passing-out brain. Ugh, bugs.

Basically, One-Eyed Doll are most awesome female-fronted rock with an insane amount of energy and totally worth your time to check out. Keep an eye out for the new album, Dirty, which should be releasing in the next few months.

Finally, have a shit-ton of links. I wonder how much a shit-ton actually is? Does anyone else actually use shit-ton as a term or is it just me?

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Kerrang! Relentless Energy Drink Tour 2012: New Found Glory, The Blackout, letlive. and While She Sleeps

Where to start with this wonderful gig? Well, the beginning would be a good place. Even better, let's start before the gig even kicked off. Two weeks before the tour, original headliners Sum 41 pulled out due to their vocalist having a back injury. All well and good, but the organisers then had to find a replacement at two weeks notice. Welsh post-hardcore guys The Blackout stepped in. Cue the shit slinging. Seriously, so much hate. Ah well, I personally prefer The Blackout over Sum 41, but I can understand that a lot of people were disappointed.

Moving on to the actual gig. Sheffield metalcore mob While She Sleeps kicked off proceedings with an amazingly slick set, powering through their tracks non-stop save for occasional instructions from frontman Loz to open up the pit or to engineer a wall of death or two. From experience, music of the While She Sleeps variety has a tendency to sound a bit messy live, but this really was brilliantly polished - great vocals, strong guitars and an immensely powerful rhythm section.

Next up was L.A. progressive post-hardcore crew letlive. who really got the crowd moving with their infectiously catchy, wonderfully raucous music. Once again, frontman Jason Aalon Butler got told off by security for climbing on the speaker stacks, but the highlight was undoubtedly the segue from a Black Flag cover to fan favourite "Muther". As I posted on my Twitter last night: words cannot describe how much I love Muther and it's infinitely more amazing live.

Following letlive.'s set there was something of a mass exodus from the LCR. I am going to put this down to the vast number of people who whinged about The Blackout playing and leave it at that. Personally, I'd rather people left than hung around and complained all the way through The Blackout's set as a group of guys next to me did. Incredibly irritating. But onto the actual set. This was my fourth time seeing The Blackout and they were just as wonderful as always. Launching their set with "I'm A Riot, You're A Fucking Riot", the crowd really got involved - evidently just as many fans as not. They followed this up with an assertion that "we're not Sum 41" and promptly covered said band's Fat Lip. And a pretty good cover at that. They might just have managed to claw back their position as "Zoe's Favourite Live Band", although that's largely because they slagged off all the people heckling them. To which I say, good for them and feel I must share this wonderful image.

And so finally we come to the headliners, pop-punkers New Found Glory. All in all a great set, but they're not a band I'm particularly interested in. Also, if anyone cares to comment, I'd really like to know if their vocalist is always quite so nasal. Anyhoos, I can't pick out individual songs (because I don't know them), but the cover of Green Day's Basketcase in their encore was a stroke of genius. Even people who hadn't really shown much interest earlier in NFG's set suddenly took notice and most of the crowd was singing along by the end. Overall a brilliant end to an awesome show.

Hello, random strangers

So, on a bit of a whim I decided to start a blog. This is probably a bad move and I'll start forgetting to use it in a few months. BUT in the mean time, it's just going to be a collection of random musings. Largely about music, but I'm sure I'll find other stuff to talk about.

IATSATH is just my most common username. Anywhere else you find it - it's probably me. This HERE is my Last.fm, which is the most relevant to this blog.